“It’s good for you.” He caught her chin and pulled her head back against his shoulder so he could wash her face. “Keep your eyes closed. I like your face all shiny with my seed, baby, but you might not like it as much as I do.”
Flambé reached back over her shoulder and wrapped her arm around his neck. It was the first real spontaneous gesture of affection she’d ever made toward him that wasn’t sexual since his leopard had claimed hers. He knew she’d done it because she was half asleep, but he’d take what he could get. He was very gentle as he washed her face. She fell asleep as he held her, just soaking her body, letting the salts have time to do their work.
The moment he began to soap her body, it didn’t matter how gentle he was, he could see how sensitive her skin was, particularly now that hormones were raging. If she always had trouble with her nerve endings so close, the merging of the leopard and human cycles had worsened the effects. Her body shuddered with every touch no matter how careful or impersonal he was. He forced himself to use stronger, harder strokes, even though it went against everything he wanted to do, and she quieted.
When he washed between her legs she cried out and turned her face into his shoulder, biting down hard with her teeth, not realizing she was biting him. He murmured to her soothingly and finished, wrapping her once in a to
wel rather than trying to dry her off, and then putting her in bed and letting her air-dry.
He checked the butterfly bandages and then pressed a kiss into the middle of her back before heading downstairs to the kitchen.
12
SEVASTYAN poured Flambé a cup of coffee. “Tell me about your father. You don’t really talk about him that much.”
He kept his gaze fixed on her face. She was dressed in loose-fitting casual clothes. Nothing sexy about a pair of soft cotton, dark navy pants and a thin cotton ombré top, but for some reason he found her sexier than ever. Her face was devoid of all makeup and her hair was shiny clean, piled high on her head in that messy knot she favored. He knew it was to keep it off her skin, where before he thought it was to prevent the mass from bothering her while she worked or from getting it wet when she was in the tub.
“I don’t?” Her long lashes lifted and then she stared down into her coffee cup as if it would somehow help her to remember if she talked about her father or not. Her lashes were naked of all mascara, strawberry blond with those red-gold tips that got to him every time.
He had studied the photographs of the leopards in South Africa, interested to see what her species looked like. They were very small. The heaviest female strawberry leopard known so far was only sixty pounds. That was extremely small for a shifter. He was Amurov and his male was a big brute, coming in close to two hundred pounds of pure muscle.
“No, baby, you don’t. I never met him. What was he like?”
She moved her shoulders as if she was stiff. “Why did your leopard bite me again?”
“Flambé.” He pushed warning into his voice. Mild. But still a warning. “Things got heated in the bedroom. Is there a reason you don’t want to talk about your father?”
She shrugged. “It’s just difficult to know what to say about him.” She pushed the coffee away after taking a sip. “He was great with plants. Really great.” Enthusiasm slipped into her voice.
She hadn’t eaten much. She’d pushed the food around on her plate more than she’d actually put it in her mouth. He got her a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator and set it close to her hand, removing the coffee cup. “Honey, if you don’t like what I make for you, you need to tell me. I can cook other things. I just don’t admit it to the family. The chef can make anything for us and I can reheat it.”
Flambé sat up straight and shook her head, her eyes meeting his. “No. This is good, Sevastyan. I’m not a big eater as a rule.”
Her voice was very low. Husky. It played along his nerve endings. He watched her take a long drink of water and work her throat. A drop of water from the condensation on the bottle splashed on her top and stained the color a darker hue.
“I know Leland was amazing with his business, Flambé, but that doesn’t tell me anything about what he was like as a father. Or as a husband. I know he took a mate very late in his life. Your mother was a good twenty years younger than he was. She was a chef, wasn’t she?”
He was a rigger, a rope artist, and he paid close attention to everything to do with his partners, but now, especially to his mate. The slightest change in her breathing, the sweep of her lashes, the press of her lips. She was very uncomfortable discussing anything to do with her parents on a personal level.
“You know my mother died in childbirth, right?”
His heart stuttered. Clenched hard enough that it gave him pause. The moment he saw those steady trickles of blood running down her shoulder from Shturm’s claiming bite he knew something was wrong. He felt protective of Flambé. Not just protective. His sentiment went far beyond that. They’d spent time together, but mostly he expressed his passions in his art. He allowed his emotions for her to be wrapped up in his rope. He felt his connection growing with every knot, every tie. The touches on her skin. The sex was inflammatory, wild, the best, but it wasn’t nearly as intimate as the laying of the ropes. Wrapping her up—in him.
“Yes, malen’koye plamya, I’m well aware your mother died in childbirth. That’s one of the reasons I’m against you having children. I don’t want to risk you. I know it’s practically impossible for birth control to work for shifters, so I’d like to talk to a doctor about how to keep that from happening or how to best take care of it before you’re at risk.”
She tilted her chin at him. “Has it occurred to you that I might want children?”
The moment she gave him that defiant little chin lift of hers, Shturm roared and his body stirred, his dominant side rising fast. “Naturally. Which is why I said I was against you having children. I don’t want you carrying our children. We can use a surrogate. There has to be a safer way. When we find it, we’ll have children if you want them.”
He kept his tone mild, as if he wasn’t laying down the law when he was, because he damn well wasn’t going to lose her. He doubted if the strawberry leopards had been wiped out just from poachers. He thought it more likely was from whatever caused them to hemorrhage when they had even a slight cut.
The moment he realized she could be like her mother—a hemophiliac—that it could be genetic, he had set in motion everything he could to aid her. His people were researching. Evangeline, Ashe, Ania. Drake’s people. Jake Bannaconni’s people. Sevastyan had already texted Jake Bannaconni’s doctor, a renowned shifter, asking his advice. He knew there were ways to help treat bleeding disorders. That fast he had an incredible team to make certain Flambé lived a long life—with him. It did make him grateful for the life he led. There were some positive things to it. The thought of losing her was already beyond his comprehension.
“How did your parents meet? Did your father ever tell you?”
Flambé pulled her legs up under her, curling into herself there on the window seat in the kitchen. She looked away from him, her fingers circling the water bottle. “Yes. I was curious of course. She was one of the females he rescued. He put her through culinary school. According to him, she loved to cook and was very good at it.”
“She had a reputation,” Sevastyan encouraged when she fell silent. “Evangeline told me she was a chef at Baume, the renowned French restaurant in downtown San Antonio. She would have had to be amazing to work there.”